Keir Starmer: Labour’s electable new leader

GEORGE ORWELL’S lament in 1937 that socialism is a magnet for “sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers” has held up well in recent years. Tony Blair, who avoided mentioning the word, dragged an unwilling Labour Party rightwards while wearing good suits; Michael Foot and Jeremy Corbyn, the furthest-left leaders in the past half-century, put the least effort into looking electable.

Sir Keir Starmer, who succeeded Mr Corbyn on April 4th, may be a rare experiment in recent history: a self-described socialist whom voters can picture in office. He has credible executive experience as Britain’s former public prosecutor. His dispatch-box interrogations as shadow Brexit secretary outshone Mr Corbyn’s ramblings. He has good suits.

Voters can imagine Sir Keir as prime minister by a margin of 42% to 27%, according to Opinium, a pollster. The comparable figures for Mr Corbyn in the 2019 election were 29% to 59%.

His task, says Neil Kinnock, Foot’s successor, is to prove the party is in “decent and sensible hands” by making a rapid break with Mr Corbyn’s regime. He has already made two moves designed to do that. He has apologised to Jewish groups for the anti-Semitism that thrived under his predecessor, and he has purged Mr Corbyn’s allies from the shadow cabinet and drafted in sensible, more moderate types.

Anneliese Dodds, the new shadow chancellor, is a former academic and MEP. Ed Miliband, a former party leader, is back as shadow business secretary. Charlie Falconer, Mr Blair’s justice secretary, is the shadow attorney-general. Lisa Nandy, one of Sir Keir’s leadership rivals, is the new shadow foreign secretary; unlike Mr Corbyn, she is a strong critic of Vladimir Putin. Angela Rayner, who left school without qualifications, is the new deputy leader; she is on the left but never fit in with Mr Corbyn’s gang. Rebecca Long-Bailey, Mr Corbyn’s favoured candidate, is shadow education secretary.

Yet Sir Keir’s policies are well to the left. He will retain manifesto pledges to renationalise railways and utilities, to end private contracting in the public sector and to increase taxes on top earners and companies. He also wants to abolish university tuition fees, scrap the current welfare regime and place new constraints on military intervention to prevent “illegal wars”.

The challenge for Sir Keir is enormous. The party’s performance in last year’s election was its worst since 1935. To get a working majority, it would need a swing of around 10% at the next election, similar to Mr Blair’s landslide victory in 1997. The campaign will be a tricky one because the targets include a wide variety of seats—professional and manufacturing, north and south, renters and homeowners, notes Alan Wager of King’s College London.

The pandemic may heighten voters’ enthusiasm for public services, which will be good for Labour. But it will also leave Britain indebted, and thus present hard choices on public spending. “Since 2010 Labour has struggled to rebuild its reputation for economic competence, and the crisis clearly doesn’t remove the need for us to convince voters we can once again be trusted to manage the economy,” says Spencer Livermore, who ran the party’s election campaign in 2015.

The party must take care not to appear opportunistic, warns Peter Mandelson, an architect of Mr Blair’s centrist New Labour. Voters’ support for a more protective state “should not be mistaken for a headlong embrace of big-state socialism”, he cautions. Sir Keir’s arrival may clarify whether British voters shunned socialism because of the policies, or their advocates.■